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Palintology: A
scientific multi-disciplinary approach to the study of empty minds and emptier
rhetoric. Palintologists hope to, one day, be able to find a cure for the
dumbing effect that such minds have on our own, through their seemingly
entertaining and deceptively harmless shenanigans.

Piecemaking: Making peace between
warring parties by chopping to pieces either the disputed land or one of the
warring parties, whichever one manages to accomplish first. Russia’s first and
last neo-Czar Putin the Piecemaker is said to have perfected this diplomatic
art both on the international and domestic scene, which is indeed why he was
the first and last neo-Czar. He has shown the world how a piece of the brave
can really be had.

Placebo Politics (AKA Ersatz
Politics): Political stands that prefer erring on the side on inaction, or,
when pressures accumulate, the side of noncommittal action designed to make the
politicians involved look responsive, while having minimal actual impact on the
situation being addressed.

Plan B:​An old invention by the
punditocracy of democratic states meant primarily to save their face whenever
their analyses, interpretations and predictions prove embarrassingly false,
such as when they claim that a certain world leader plans to do A, when, in
fact, he planned to do B all along. By claiming that this leader was somehow
forced to resort to Plan B, members of the punditocracy avoid admitting that
they earlier interpretations were wrong.

Platyputin: See
Vladdipus.

Polonialism: The process
of ridding oneself of useful idiots whose presence was once deemed necessary
for helping their purported allies conduct or legitimate some hapless colonial
endeavor but who have since outlived their usefulness. The process could take
place a bit too fast and sudden in some cases, and a bit too slow and
methodical in others. But, considering the nature of useful idiots and their
role, the development itself is often a bit too inevitable.

Polonialist Coup: A coup
d’état carried out against a leader who was, for a while, someone's useful
idiot.

A statue of Vladdie the Cullminator found in a

little corner near Moscow’s famous Red Square

The PoorPutin: In
ancient Russian mythology, the PoorPutin is the name given to a corrupt and
cruel autocrat who fends off challenges to his authority by rewarding loyalty
and sycophancy among his immediate coterie, and masks his dark side and
impulses through frequent and well-orchestrated public shows of joviality and
bravado designed to endear him to the masses. The PoorPutin’s personality is so
strong and dominant that he is often blamed as well for the evil acts committed
by his coterie. It’s on account of this tendency that most deliriologists
believe that the majority of Russian potentates described as PoorPutins suffer
from a persecution complex, despite being the primary persecutors of their
societies. According to the famous renaissance deliriologist, Phried Umbilico,
the infamous Russian czar Vladdie the Cullminator was an “excellent example of
a traditional PoorPutin, for although he had a tendency to fuck his daughters
and eat his wives, he was generous to his friends – to a fault, in fact, as the
recently leaked Klanama Papers reveal – and popularly known
for his killer joviality.”

Not to be confused with the PurrPutin –
a genus of wildcats known to inhabit the Siberian steppes where it survives by
digging up and consuming what’s locally known as the Gulag Juice: a
dark and rich soil derived from the decaying corpses of former dissidents and
purged party leaders long buried in cold shallow graves where it is mixed with
permafrost, animal dung, dead hopes and dream, and wasted human potential.
According to Phried Umbilico, there is indeed a connection between PoorPutins and PurrPutins,
which is why many people tend to confuse them. Almost every PoorPutin,
Umbilico notes, is known to have been an avid collector and “domesticator,” if
such thing is possible, of PurrPutins.

(The) Postol Syndrome: The phenomenon
whereby highly smart people believe, say and do terribly stupid things. Scientists
have found a number of causes for it, including: early onset megalomania, late
stage assholery, being the victim of a kompromat, and eating one’s own excrement
believing that it would taste like chocolate on account of how special one
happens to be in one’s own mind. Naturally, scientists see a close link between
the first and last cause. The Syndrome was named after an
MIT professor who was the first subject of the study that identified the phenomenon
as representing its own unique mental disorder.

Pukha and Vladali: Russo-Persian
drinks made of the fermented quintessence of shit, self-righteous lies, and
illusions of grandeur. Pukha is often consumed during a morning ritual that
features a number of executions followed by public bridal showers for the
spouses of the executed who are believed to have regained their virginity and
could now be pounced upon by the nearest relative. Vladali, on the other hand,
is consumed before going to sleep as it is known for enabling sleepers to
remember every gory detail of their ghoulish dreams of endless blood-fests and
virgin-sacrifices upon waking up.

Pundorons, Pundwits &
Pundompoops: a growing assortment of usually quite intelligent pundits
who can, nonetheless, come off as extremely dimwitted and downright driveling
nincompoops in connection to certain issues where their ideological stands seem
to serve as powerful filters through which the dictates of their otherwise
sound minds tend to go through before reaching the fact-processing centers in their
fact-riddled brains. Thomas Friedman and Farid Zakaria serve as “excellent”
examples of this increasingly troubling phenomenon. The rumor that they might
be launching their own business venture soon, a sweets shop that will be
reportedly named the Zak & Fried, seem to point by itself to their waning
prognostication skills. Some of their colleagues have reportedly advised them
to acquire instead some shares in the Fisk & Cock (See Under F).

(The) Putinistas: A
substratum of so-called pubic intellectuals and politicians who continue to
think of other peoples’ freedom and basic aspirations as constituting an unfair
burden on them and is simply too much to bear.

Purdogan: The
political equivalent of Bennifer or Brangelina, minus the sex appeal. That is,
unless one has a fetish for fiends or ghouls. Purdogans are known for their
continuous struggle with self-loathing which often compels them to lash out
against all those standing around them within a circle a million mile in
radius, before taking their own lives, often by proxy.

Purdogatory: An
extreme reaction to irony characterized by repeated and vicious recourse to
self-flagellation by proxy.